Liberal popularity, NDP credibility

by Inside Queen’s Park

Amending budgets, threatening elections & slapping the other leader
What a dramatic time we’ve had at Queen’s Park ever since the McGuinty government fired the starter’s pistol nearly two months ago to unleash the legislative alchemy which transmutes the dross of a bill into the gold of statute law! One could almost see the wizards’ pointy hats and colourful robes and hear the sonorous orchestral soundtrack of Walt Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And for the past week or so, the Legislature corridors seemed to echo the clatter of brooms and buckets as the government party’s designated electoral wizard — Dave Gene himself (cunningly passing among ordinary mortals as a mere Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations in the OPO) — called Liberal MPPs with instructions to unwrap their wands and commit the 2012 campaign spells to memory.

For Premier McGuinty, along with his Finance minister and campaign chair, seemed on the verge of calling for an election. That’s calling for an election, not at all the same thing as calling an election: one of the limits imposed on a minority government is that when the Lieutenant Governor is informed by the Premier that the government has lost the confidence of the House, the Queen’s representative might well be moved to feel that another party leader deserves an invitation to form a government before the incumbent government is permitted to “go to the people”, as the saying goes.

However, His Honour David C Onley did not get to canvass the governmental options over a serving of cucumber sandwiches because the current Ontario régime grasped the limitations of its charge that Andrea Horwath’s NDP was bullying Dalton McGuinty’s LIBs by preventing the passage of its minority government budget. (The perfect title for that would surely be the Accepting Budgets Act.)

The blame game
As recently noted by Michael Prue, the NDP Finance critic, the polling conducted by Forum Research on its customary 48-hour turnaround showed that twice as many held McGuinty responsible for the threatened snap election as blamed Horwath.

Part of the government’s problem is that the media has next to no tolerance for any kind of parliamentary procedure. And the voting public is not much keener to be lectured on motions, bells, abstentions, Standing Orders and the like — which means that the McGuinty government would be called upon to sell the budget itself, some parts of which are less than wildly popular.

When Budget 2012 was first tabled, almost three months ago at the end of March, the Premier declared himself confident of popular backing should the then-54 Opposition and Third Party MPPs refuse to pass it. One problem with that line was that the Liberals had kept the many unpalatable budget items firmly under wraps until the election was over. And the Liberals turned out to have stuffed a bunch of new and decidedly unpopular provisions into the budget implementation bill — though for far too long, those of us who are supposed to go through the fine print failed to highlight significant Schedules to the legislation, including widely disliked measures to facilitate privatization and contracting out, curtail environmental protection and bring in sundry other unpopular changes.

Tracking LIB unpopularity and targeting NDP credibility
Moreover, these unpopular budget measures were put on offer by an unpopular government. Look at 11 polls assessing provincial vote intent since March 2012. The PCs lead in nine polls and the Liberals in two, and the NDP leads the Liberals in six polls and is tied with them in a seventh. Yes, it’s true that the Liberals were further behind their main competitors and for a longer period prior to the 2011 election — and yet they secured a third consecutive re-election victory, though this time they could not quite win a majority of the seats.

Of course, there’s some scope for impugning Horwath’s integrity, an inviting target given her high approval ratings. The Finance minister, who can be relied on to follow a hard partisan line in relation to the NDP, is especially zealous in denigrating the budget stance of the Third Party leader. Duncan’s target is Horwath’s credibility and trust, which are key strengths.

Horwath has made herself vulnerable, as have the Premier and his team, by relying on unwritten agreements — which, as the saying goes, are not worth the paper they are not written on. Had the April 23 deal and the points agreed in the more recent interactions been written down, there would have been far greater clarity and much less strife — not to mention a good deal of other work which might have got done. The NDP and the LIBs have both retreated from their stated positions in the Budget 2012 imbroglio.

Bill 55, Strong Action for Ontario, the 300pp-plus Budget 2012 omnibus implementation bill, went through without further dispute, as expected. The NDP chose once again to abstain but this ploy caused no surprise.

Horwath holds “a conversation”
Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath delivered a cheerful and upbeat speech over breakfast June 13 at the elegant York Club for clients of law firm WeirFoulds, and the third-party boss was keen to answer audience questions to generate what she called “a conversation”. But while her clear speech struck this former speechwriter as meriting a B+, Horwath faltered when handling questions, warranting only a C- mark.

Speechifying is an essential talent of politicians at which they must perform effectively to get across their program as well as to sell themselves. But writing speeches and making them allows speech-givers to exercise some control over the tone and substance of what is written, and if the recitation is followed by a Q&A session, ‘the line’ just set out in the speech will afford some cover. But it is tricky to field questions across the entire issue landscape posed by members of a diverse audience, and it is more dangerous still in an open environment in which media and political opponents pose questions crafted to trip or corner them.

To respond to the vast range of questions that may be fired at a political leader, he or she is subject to an unremitting ordeal by briefing. Ministers face a more focused briefing regimen in most portfolios but those burdens are vast in massive ministries like Health.

*****
Interview with Michael Prue The former Mayor of East York, Michael Prue won the September 2001 by-election occasioned by the resignation of Frances Lankin. Prue, who retained this seat in the next three general elections, is NDP Finance critic.

IQP:
First of all, the huge attention drawn by your bill to protect an employee’s “tips or other gratuities”.

Prue:
First of all, credit for the idea goes to one of my constituents who asked if I was aware that in the service industries, servers aren’t allowed to keep their tips. She told me about tipping-out as a percentage of gross tips. Many restaurants tip out at 5 percent. That is, the server has to pay the restaurant 5 percent of anything they sell. On a $100 restaurant meal one would expect a 15 percent tip. But the waiter or waitress must give management $5, whether or not they get a tip. So if they get no tip, they pay $5 to the management for the privilege of having served somebody. When I found this out, I was very angry. I thought it was an isolated case but we found most restaurants do it. My bill was introduced in 2010, but it died on the order paper when the election was called. Bill 107 has been reintroduced with much more support.

IQP:
Talk about the arguments from the bill’s critics.

Prue:
I’ve heard what I consider pretty poor arguments: that owners are entitled to a percentage of tips because they set up the establishment and keep the staff in line; that the money is used to refurbish the restaurant, so that people have a nicer place in which to work; others assert baldly that they are entitled because they provide employment and can do what they want. We’ve heard as well that in small mom-and-pop operations it’s common for the manager or owner to be on call to wait tables, bartend, etc, if staffers don’t show up.

IQP:
The Labour minister initially claimed the practice was already covered by the employment standards law. The McGuinty government later shifted its position.

Prue:
It was really quite strange when I stood up to ask the question and Linda Jeffrey responded in the way she did, to much hooting and hollering. There was an immediate flurry of activity: radio interviewers seized upon it really fast; there was a Toronto Star editorial and one in the Thunder Bay newspaper; some columns in the National Post; and Christina Blizzard’s column in the Sun. Then suddenly the premier said my bill had merit and that the Labour minister should revisit it. That resulted from considerable public pressure. With such wide support, I’m hoping Bill 107 will become law and end the egregious practice of management forcing people to pay a portion of their wages in order to keep their jobs. That should be illegal in Ontario.

IQP:
Your bill is one of several bread-and-butter NDP initiatives which some call timid compared to fundamental reforms. How do you respond?

Prue:
In Europe where tipping is uncommon, left-wing parties often go for better legislation so that people don’t earn less than minimum wage. However, in North America, we have a very different culture and people here expect to tip, they want to tip and the government has recognized that people will earn their living in good part from tips they earn by giving good service. That’s why the hourly minimum wage for servers is $8.90. I could’ve gone out and said they deserve the $10.25 minimum wage like everyone else. But then tips might dry up and it would be a hard cultural shift for people to accept. So we determined it was best to ensure that the tips that were received stayed in the pockets of those who earned them. Yes, this is a bread-and-butter issue but it’s also a fundamental reform which doesn’t cost the taxpayer any money. It institutes fairness across a whole broad sector of the service industry. Remember this is not just for waiters and waitresses. It applies to anybody who ordinarily gets a tip: taxi-drivers, barbers, chambermaids, hair dressers. We don’t think it’s timid at all. We think it’s playing into people’s reasonable expectations. There’s no extra money from them, but it will mean extra money to those who received the tip.

IQP:
You had a front-row seat on the current budget furore as an NDP member of the Finance Committee. Please explain your party’s Budget 2012 position. Has the NDP over-played its hand?

Prue:
I don’t think so. Going in, we knew it would be a difficult budget. We said for months leading up to the Finance Committee hearings that we would make significant amendments to the budget bill in order to strengthen it. So we went in with a series of amendments, not expecting to have them all passed, but certainly hoping some would see the light of day. We were quite surprised on day one [when] many changes that we held dear suddenly gained Conservative support. You can imagine our surprise when they voted with us to put the brakes on privatization. You can imagine our surprise when the Conservatives voted with us on some environmental measures. Today, the tables have completely turned. It appears that the Liberals have made a deal with the Conservatives so things we were hoping to get through in committee are not passing, and I’m speaking here specifically about Schedule 28.

IQP:
Last week, the McGuinty government threatened to call an election, and over the weekend wrote demanding the NDP put its earlier promise in writing. Can they sell the notion your party broke its word?

Prue:
Nobody understands Parliamentary procedure; people either think you’re playing fair ball or you’re not. They don’t know what deals have been made, and so I was heartened by the poll numbers in the Toronto Star showing that by a two-to-one margin people blame Dalton McGuinty and not Andrea Horwath. I don’t think we overplayed our hand. We told the government we would make amendments but in the end would make sure the budget passed. That was the deal that we struck April 23, and I think that’s going to happen. As for threatening an election and calling people names, I think that it has been Mr. McGuinty who hugely overplayed his hand.

© Copyright 2012 Inside Queen's Park, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca